


Unfinished Business

by brevitas



Series: I See Dead People [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Medium AU, Modern AU, Paranormal AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-11
Updated: 2013-05-11
Packaged: 2017-12-11 14:13:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/799631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brevitas/pseuds/brevitas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's hard, being able to see ghosts. Grantaire hates this so-called 'gift', and does his best to ignore the spirits who come to him for help, generally through drinking himself into a stupor. One, however, he finds he cannot, so he follows Rosemary's last request and meets her brother Enjolras to warn him that he's in danger (and isn't that what all the spirits say these days?).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unfinished Business

"So are you gonna help me or not, mister?"

"No," Grantaire grumbled, and the bartender glanced at him; a quick flick of dark green eyes. "I'm not."

The girl sighed. She was too short for the barstool and her legs dangled, and when she got nervous she had a habit of kicking her feet. It _thump_ ed each time she knocked her heels against the decorative barring.

"Come on," she whined. "If you ain't gonna do it, who will?"

"I don't care," he said, louder this time, and the bartender's concerned look lasted a heartbeat longer. Grantaire's head hurt--his mouth tasted like a donkey's asshole. He wondered if the bartender remembered the first girl he killed in '97, the redhead who he'd had to gag when she refused to be quiet. She had suffocated and died after two hours.

He swirled his whiskey in his glass and took it in one swallow, his throat convulsing through the acrid taste. The girl impatiently watched him, and heaved a sigh when he set the shot glass on the counter.

"You know he's a bad man," she said, wiggling forward so she was balanced precariously on the edge of her seat. She planted her elbows on the bar and stared at Grantaire, who did his best to ignore her. "You know he's gonna do it again."

"I don't know that." He waved for another drink. The bartender reached to take his glass and Grantaire flinched but didn't move his hand in time--their fingers brushed. He was assailed with the image of a different victim, the third one, a two-year-old named Rebecca. He'd gutted her and dumped her in the sand dunes for the coyotes.

"Fuck." Grantaire stood, knocking over his stool when he fumbled to get to the trash can. He threw up until his stomach was empty and then crawled back to the bar, pointed vaguely at the phone. "Can I borrow that?"

The bartender acquiesced and passed him the bar's cellphone and Grantaire, whose vision was narrowed by alcohol, had to really focus in order to hit the right buttons. He stood again (more carefully this time), and made his way to the bathroom, where the music was quieter and no one was around to eavesdrop.

"This is the Mrytle Beach police department, how may I help you?"

"Hi," he said blankly, then cleared his throat. The girl had followed him in here, despite the sign on the door that denoted it was for men. She hopped up onto the sink and idly swung her feet, humming as she watched him. "I'd like to report a crime, I guess."

The woman on the other line paused, then said, "What sort of crime, sir?"

"Serial murders?" He asked slowly, and the little girl nodded. "Yeah, serial murders. There's been seven of 'em, all girls under ten, from '97 to just last year. He believes he's stopped for good but you know how serial killers get, all false promises and shit."

The woman seemed to need a moment to compose herself. "What's the murderer's name, sir?"

"Uh." He licked his bottom lip and the girl smiled at him, so he covered the cellphone's microphone and asked quietly, "What was his name again?"

"Gregory Delano Presley," she recited. He removed his hand.

"Apparently he's a Mr. Gregory Delano Presley, which is really a rather unfortunate name if you ask me."

"And who are you, sir? How did you come to possess this knowledge?" He could imagine her, fabricated from just her voice, sitting at her desk while coworkers bustled around her with her pen poised eagerly above a notebook. He sighed.

"You know, you wouldn't believe me if I told you," he said mournfully, "But let's just say a bratty little girl who wouldn't shut up was the one who passed on the information to me." He hung up on her next question and flung the cellphone away from him, where it clattered against the tiled floor.

The little girl hopped down with a brilliant smile, and immediately crushed him in a hug. "Thank you," she said into his stomach, squeezing. "Thank you so very much, mister."

"Sure," he said, looking at himself in the mirror, where the girl's reflection was distorted and she resembled more of a wisp of smoke than a child. "Don't mention it."

+++++

The sirens woke him in his apartment a block down, so at three in the morning Grantaire decided that the cops had found the bodies and his work was officially done. He folded his arms underneath his head and stared at the ceiling while the lights went by, throwing colors across his room.

"I'm gonna paint," he said, loud enough that in the other bedroom he could hear the rustle of the sheets as Jehan turned over. He went to the canvas and sorted through his supplies. The motley collection of ghosts clustered around his room all offered suggestions on a subject.

"A cardinal on a tree branch might be nice," a woman said, the victim of a rape and murder back in the early '50's. She still had the rope wrapped around her pale throat.

"I think you should do something contemporary, like a scene of beachgoers." This came from a man who had died only last week, pulled beneath the waves by an undercurrent and drowned. He wasn't here because he wanted justice; he was here because he wanted Grantaire to pass on a message to his daughter concerning the location of his hidden will.

Grantaire groaned, grabbing bottles of red and blue paints and saying, "Stop talking. I'm the one painting, not you guys."

In the end he painted the scene from his bedroom, with the long shadows and the colors streaked across the walls, but this time the bed, and the room, was empty. He sighed as he looked at it, blearily signed his name in the corner. He was still a little drunk so although his painting skills were up to par his handwriting was not, and it resembled more of a sideways curl than his signature.

"I'm gonna sell it," he said as he made his way back to his bed, curling up under the covers. "Tomorrow."

None of them had anything to say about that, though he was pretty sure he heard a little boy whisper, "R sure is grumpy today." He put his pillow over his head in retaliation.

+++++

"Excuse me, sir?"

Grantaire looked up. He was sitting out on a deck of a cafe, drinking a coffee and trying to ease his pounding headache. He'd just gotten back from selling his painting and had a nice sum in his back pocket from it; the art dealer had liked it much more than he had figured.

He squinted through his sunglasses at her and finally said, "Yeah?"

"I need you to do me a favor," she said, hushed, and she stepped in closer to speak with him. Grantaire glanced around; another patron was looking at him strangely, and the waiter ignored his table on his rounds. Grantaire sighed because he understood that their awkardness meant no one else could see the woman he was addressing.

"What kind of favor?" He asked, because he already looked crazy and he didn't really care if he looked crazier. She took the seat opposite him and leaned in across the table.

"I need you to speak to my brother," she said. She looked fearfully to the right and he followed her stare just in time to see a hulking black dog disappear around the corner. He arched an eyebrow at her and she faced him again. Her hands were shaking now, he noted, almost as though she was afraid for her life (unlife? relife?).

She pressed her full mouth together and when she spoke next she was practically whispering. "His name is Enjolras and he's in danger. Terrible, terrible danger."

Grantaire stared at her. "Enjolras, huh?" He took another drink from his coffee, thought about what Jehan might say if he mentioned he'd helped out a frightened woman who just wanted to give her brother a heads-up. He sighed. "Alright. Give me his address, and whatever I need to say to get him to believe me."

She rattled off an adresss and then a cellphone number, and admitted that she wasn't sure if he'd believe Grantaire at all. "I'm sorry," she said with a faint blush. "He's somewhat of a skeptic when it comes to this stuff."

"Aren't we all," he muttered, keying the information into an app on his phone that saved notes. He titled it 'this one's for the scared girl I met at the coffeeshop on 5th'. "I'll do my best."

"Thank you." She looked to either side then smiled, the first one he'd seen. "Thank you very much."

With that, she disappeared, as ghosts were prone to do. Grantaire returned to his coffee. The waiter said nothing about his previous behavior, and asked if he perchance wanted to order anything else.

+++++

"You're going to _what_?"

"I'm just gonna stop by and say hello," Grantaire answered. "It'll only take me two seconds."

"What are you planning on saying to him?" Jehan excused himself from the music room and the mayhem of children's voices vanished. Grantaire heard the click of the door as it closed behind him. "You don't even know this man; and she went out of her way to warn you that he wasn't likely to believe your story anyway."

Grantaire pat his pockets down for a smoke, balancing his cellphone between his shoulder and his ear. "Well, I didn't promise her I'd be successful," he said idly, finally finding a cigarette crammed at the bottom. He lit it and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. "I'm just gonna say, Hello, sir, I received a message from your dearly departed sister today and she would like me to tell you that you're in terrible danger." He mimicked the woman's voice, grinning at a little girl he passed on the sidewalk that gave him owlish eyes.

"Grantaire." Jehan sighed, and Grantaire knew him to be pacing; if he concentrated he could hear the soft squeaking of Jehan's shoes as he walked back and forth in the hallway. "You can't keep doing this to yourself."

Grantaire snorted. "We can discuss this later, alright? I'm already there." Grantaire hung up on him, knowing that he was going to get shit for it when he got home. He could practically hear Jehan now, complaining that he couldn't help Grantaire if Grantaire wouldn't let him.

He snubbed his cigarette out on the sidewalk and pushed open the front gate, taking the stone path up to the front door. It was a nice little house, he thought, built in the bungalow style, with a long front porch and a copius amount of windchimes. Grantaire studied them as he knocked on the door, noticed that the one on the far end was compiled of about a hundred tiny bells. He wondered how that sounded when the wind was blowing.

"...who are you?"

Grantaire hadn't even heard the door open, so lost in his thoughts he'd been. He turned to look and covered his surprise with a cough--this man was absolutely _gorgeous_. He had a face the Romans would have wanted to put into marble and by god, his hair was so golden it looked like he'd just walked off the set of a shampoo commercial.

He was wearing a plaid button-up and dark blue jeans and regarding Grantaire rather suspiciously, which Grantaire really couldn't blame him for (how long had he been staring? This was getting out of hand).

"I'm Grantaire," he said, to save himself from gaping at him for the rest of the evening. "A, uh, friend of your sister's."

"Rosemary's?" Enjolras asked, startled. All of a sudden he smiled, and Grantaire was quite sure that there had to be a law against looking that good on a Sunday evening. "I didn't realize."

He stepped outside and shut his door behind him, taking a seat on the bench situated to the far right corner of his patio. Grantaire joined him when he gestured for him to do so.

"So tell me, Grantaire, where did you know my sister from?"

"Uh." Grantaire scratched at his neck. "I met her at a coffeehouse."

Enjolras chuckled. "The one on 5th?" He asked, and when Grantaire nodded his smile broadened. "Yeah, she loved that place."

"Well, listen," Grantaire began, folding his arms across his chest. "She gave me a message to give to you. And I know this is gonna sound really weird so just take a deep breath and hear me out, alright?"

Enjolras' smile faded. "...okay."

"She wants me to tell you that you're in--" He stopped. There was something on Enjolras' chest, a wavering red mark that shivered as he watched it. Grantaire stared at the dot, confused.

"There's a, uh, dot on your chest," he said, and then all the sudden he understood why it looked so familiar--it was, after all, the laser aim off a sniper rifle.

**Author's Note:**

> did I or did I not promise an eventual update? so I kind of lied because I started another AU (I hear the distant screams of "ANOTHER?!") but yeah, enjoy, I'm going to do some more work on Ashes to Ashes this weekend and hopefully get you guys another installment on that one too :)
> 
> so this simply had to be made and no, I've never been to Myrtle Beach, so forgive me if something is weird or wrong. uh I'm also not an actual medium so I'm kind of making this up as I go along, hopefully not insulting anybody
> 
> series title is from all of our favorite line concerning ghosts, hmm? and chapter title is from this quote "Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that's what." by Salman Rushdie
> 
> enjoy, tumblr is idfaciendumest, kisses to everybody who reads/kudos/comments you're all darlings!


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